Last Redoubt

[Sallera]

Niev has to fight to avoid the ghost of a smile at Dreamcatcher's comment, disguising the impulse by turning toward him. I am not the right person to ask about being watchful of emotions, but I think in this case, it is appropriate.

"I did not look that closely. Did you notice anything of the sort, Seer?"

[appending_doom]

@Dream

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It wasn't mentioned (it seemed slightly more relevant that they'd been flayed alive); you can make a Wisdom check to see if you remember seeing it.

[Fishy]

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Sure- except thetangledweb.net appears to be down. Don't suppose you remember my Wisdom offhand?

[Sallera]

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Tangled Web's working fine for me; Dream's Wis is 15.

[Fishy]

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In that case: (1d20+2)[8]

[appending_doom]

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The front of their skulls looked fine, but you have no idea whether that was true for the whole skull. All you remember was the flayed part, really.

[Fishy]

"Perhaps you should go and check on them."

[appending_doom]

"I assure you I do not plan to leave you alone, especially if you suggest you witnessed me colleagues defeated."

[Sallera]

Niev shrugs, trying to rouse Reason. "We can all go look, then. I don't see any reason we have to stick around here at the moment anyway."

[appending_doom]

"Well, as long as we're all friends..."

It's not clear whether the creature intends the statement to be a threat, but it passes by the creatures it had been fighting a minute earlier, heading towards the entrance of its caves.

When it arrives at the empty cavern, it is to find the corpses as they were before, skinned and mutilated; having seen the creature, it is easy to see where their facial tentacles might have been. The doctor carefully lifts one of the corpses, and shakes his head.

"It's not a competing clan," he reports. "And the Minotaur goes from the throat."

The tentacle thing sighs. "It seems more likely than not your friend is deceased. There are few things that would do this without leaving any other visible damage, and none of them would leave your friend alive."

[Sallera]

The creature's words - rather more convincing than Kollos's had been, earlier - slowly sink into Niev's mind, warring with both a grim and unquenchable optimism and a subconscious that simply refused to accept Mari's death until she had seen it herself. Waves of competing emotion wash across her, the cold desire for vengeance crashing against a wall of obsidian logic, and her hand slowly rises toward the back of the Kollos puppet's head, pausing there a moment before falling again.

"If Mari really is..." Her voice nearly breaks, and she falls silent a moment before continuing, soft and wavering. "If what you say is true, then you know where we stand. I can't ally with the one responsible for this, no matter what you claim. And you... you no longer have any way of persuading me."

She looks up at the creature, her voice slowly growing stronger. "You can't threaten to kill me, because then you lose your weapon, and what's the point? You can't make me into your puppet, because then I am no longer kalashtar, and useless to you. And you can't hurt my friends, because if you try that again, I will burn you and your servant to ash, though it take every last drop of my strength." Her eyes flicker with grey light, throwing every aspect of her face into sharp relief, and her words become brittle iron.

Pausing a moment as the storm in her mind catches up with her, she shakes it off, ignoring the pain. "We're leaving. Don't bother trying to stop us."

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One last wild-surged Vigor, because if he's not convinced, this isn't going to be pleasant.

Enervation: (1d10)[1]

[appending_doom]

"Leaving? I wouldn't have thought you to so obviously lack pragmatism. If you are so eager to risk the dangers out there without any allies, I promise I will be watching, and when you're out of hope...well, maybe then you'll see reason." The creature makes no effort to hinder Niev's movement, although the exit is still blocked off.

[Fishy]

"We will never be out of hope. Nor will you ever be able to show us Reason."

[appending_doom]

"Regardless, you have achieved a remarkable feat. I am going to leave you alone...neither to hinder, nor help. Of course, that means you have to find your own way out of here. Try not to get in my way around here."

[Sallera]

The creature's acquiescence surprises Niev; the tension she had been holding in anticipation of further conflict doesn't dissipate as she silently leaves it with the corpses and heads for the exit. The too-smooth rock of the former tunnel, she realizes, is rather similar to the door that had been linked to the resonance stone, although there is no such construct here. Spinning around once with her eyes closed, she drives the heel of her palm into the wall, testing its reality. That failing, she runs her fingers carefully along the wall, trying to locate a seam.

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Will, if necessary: (1d20+5)[25]
Search: (1d20)[15]

Huh, finally rolled well. Suppose that means neither's relevant...

[appending_doom]

The rock does appear to have seams, but as they're about six feet apart, and the rock is about six inches or more thick, you doubt you can move it on your own, or even with Dream's help.

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Will save...noted.

[Sallera]

"Did this come down from above?" Niev murmurs, slowly tapping a knuckle against each part of the seam and listening carefully to the sounds. "It doesn't look like hinges would work too well, and there was a lot of noise..."

"I suppose we could always tell him to open his door if he wants to keep it intact," she adds, although she doesn't sound very enthusiastic about the idea.

[appending_doom]

The floor seam yields an odd noise, almost hollow, suggesting the wall had risen.

[Sallera]

"No, it came up, sounds like. That might make things easier." Kneeling in front of the door, Niev gives it a few more experimental taps, finding the thinnest sounding location she can. Tucking the light behind her ear, she traces a small slice of stone near the very edge of the floor with one hand, then lays four fingers of the other against the rock inside the area she has marked. She concentrates for a moment, and with a muffled ringing, a small section of rock, just enough to see through, shivers and breaks apart into dust.

As soon as she's certain her little crack hasn't destabilized anything, she takes the light and holds it up to the edge, looking for any mechanisms that might be responsible for holding up the door.

[appending_doom]

You see a piece of a small crystal, and, by looking carefully, can see at least one other embedded in the stone to the side. The crystal is glowing, and seems to be holding the stone up to where it had shifted. Damage to the crystal, or a burst of anti-psionic force, could likely break the equilibrium.

[Sallera]

"Well, there's something in there. I think those crystals might be holding it up. I'm not sure how much more blasting I can manage today, though. Reason, do you have anything that could turn those off? Or just break them?"

[appending_doom]

"If there's one thing my kind is good at, it's breaking things."

Reason takes a position near the lower end of the door and, with some amount of positioning and quite a lot of blasting, releasing a violet line that cracks the crystals, eventually breaks one.

The wall wavers and shakes before crashing down through whatever lower opening it originally raised up from. The stone cracks, suggesting the tentacled creature won't be blocking off that passage much in the future.

The maze of passages through which you originally came stretches out beyond.

[appending_doom]

You have not been traveling more than a few minutes before Reason slows, and begins glancing at the walls nervously. Rather than laced with the traces of the squid-headed creature's existence, they are bone-dry, and have a musty smell.

"This isn't right at all," she mutters

[Sallera]

Once they finally leave the tentacled creature's home, the tension keeping Niev moving forward abruptly dissipates, and she trails behind the others in a daze, absently sipping from the flask of sugared tea to warm her frost-chilled body.

Mari, where are you? I don't even know how to start looking any more, you've gone too far ahead... I'm sorry. We had a dream to seek, a promise to keep, and now I've failed you. How did we get lost so easily? The sky, the stars, a place free from the Quori... I thought that was what we were seeking. Not a weapon. But that's what everyone seems to expect me to be, now. I knew we'd have to fight, to get what we wanted. I can endure that. But I don't know how long I can endure it alone.

I'll find you. I don't know how, yet, but whatever it takes, I'll find you. So please... be safe when I do.

She raises the flask to her lips again, but finds it empty, and slips it back into a pocket as Reason's caution finally registers. Looking around, she notices that everything seems rather blurry... oh. Blinking rapidly, she wipes away tears she had barely noticed were there, and tries again.

"Did we come through here before? This looks a little different."

[appending_doom]

"It looks like the Labyrinth," Reason says darkly. "I'd expected to steer clear of it." She pauses at a four-way intersection, frowning. "Do you remember which way we came from?"

[Sallera]

"Oh... I wasn't really thinking that far ahead at the time. Um, let's see..." Casting her mind back, Niev attempts to recall the route they had taken, placing half-remembered images in some sort of orientation. If only she'd been paying more attention when they left Tentacles behind...

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I'm guessing this would be a Wisdom check? (1d20+2)[7]

[appending_doom]

Niev finds it difficult to recall the last tunnel they'd walked through, much less a good sense of what direction they came from.

[Fishy]

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Dreamcatcher has 5 ranks in Autohypnosis, so he can memorize an arbitrary string of symbols by taking 10. Does he know where we came from?

[appending_doom]

@Dream

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It seems like you do remember the pathway of turns you took to get to this point.

[appending_doom]

@Dream

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Make a will save in conjucntion